Remember Shah Rukh Khan’s Darr? The film depicts the vehement obsession of a lover. He not only chases her for years but also tries to kill her as she gets engaged to another man. While, even in real life, we have heard of such cases where a man stalks his girlfriend or wife, a strange incident has come to the fore where a woman stalked her boyfriend for 10 years, compelling him to flee to another country.
Filmmaker Jarlath Rice, an Irishman, while revealing his depressing ordeal when he was stalked by his obsessed female ex-lover for a decade to the new Virgin Media One documentary said that it was “very humiliating”. Moving ahead, he opened up about how people told him to “sort it out himself” instead of extending their helping hands. Following the same, he was compelled to flee to the UK as this was the only way to escape his stalker who sent her more than 20,000 messages and calls. However, she followed him to Brighton too.
The traumatising event began when Jarlath was in a Dublin cafe where he found a note from a woman, Lina Tantash, asking if she could join him. Jarlath said that he found the move “kind of cute and a bit funny” and the duo started interacting thereafter. The woman even gave him her number.
Jarlath, within a month, called it off with Lina which she could not tolerate. Jarlath said, “She would turn up wherever I was. I’d come out sometimes at night and she’d be driving by, or I would cycle to work and she would cross my path.” He added, “The penny dropped- I realised that when I was going to meet my mates for a pint, watch a game of football or something, and she was there, it was because she had hacked into my phone messages.”
Despite changing his number repeatedly, the filmmaker used to receive constant calls, messages and emails. Later, she even threatened him with suicide. In April 2014, when Jarlath left his apartment with his girlfriend, Lina appeared and started screaming at his girlfriend. Jarlath said that she physically attacked him and tore his shoulder socket out. He added, “She tried to put me through a plate glass window. I did think she was going to kill me.”
Jarlath fled to the UK but a year later, she found him and contacted the Department of Education at the place where he was working, telling them that he was a paedophile. Later, when she followed him in England, Jarlath reported it to the police and Lina was sentenced to four years behind bars.
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